1. Field of the Invention.
The present invention is a system for conducting electronic commerce. The invention relates to electronic systems and methods for coordinating supply and demand information. A user (purchaser) places a request for materials or services into a system that can intelligently sort through data to find the fewest number of vendors likely to provide all the desired parts or services to the user, even if the user has no information about the desired part or service.
2. Description of the prior art
Electronic commerce is frequently conducted through dedicated websites representing individual sellers. E-commerce in the form of companies like Amazon.com and e-bay are now part of the commercial landscape. These companies make use of the internet to allow users to seek out products using typical browser operations. The user enters the information describing the product he or she is looking for, and the commercial web site converts that data into a format it can use effectively with its own database. The databases of the various sellers contains the inventory of the products they supply or have access to. The more specific the search query provided by the customer, the faster and easier the search the browser system can provide.
Purchasing systems based on electronic catalogs (hereinafter Catalog Systems) allows users to easily purchase items contained in the catalog. These systems typically house hundreds or thousands of items available from several different suppliers. The suppliers may place a subset of items that they can sell in their electronic catalog. If an item is available from a supplier, but it is not present in their electronic catalog, it cannot be purchased through the catalog system. Similarly, if an item is available from a supplier who is not known to the catalog system at all, the user cannot purchase the item.
Existing search engines use correlative databases and bridges to connect a user's query to the link or flag in a database that corresponds to the product the user is actually seeking. The query provides one or more key words that are used to scan a database for similar terms. Depending on the degree of character matching to the initial query, and the tolerance set in the browser application, the search engine may provide a few responses, or a large number of responses. This direct searching of databases provides users with quick and easy access to vendor products assuming the product is within the database. Methods disclosed in the prior art include several methods of parsing data and scanning databases.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,529,903 to Smith et al., describes a method and apparatus for converting a users ambiguous search query into a set of potentially disambiguated search results. The method and apparatus described by Smith utilize the input information from the user to create a second set of information that is used to scan for documents correlating to the input search terms from the first set of information. The second set of information corresponds with mapping information used by the systems document retrieval system. The retrieved results are returned to the user at the end of the search.
U.S. application 2004/0059731 to Yianilos, et al., describes a multistage intelligent database search method. The method utilizes a polygraph indexing pre-filter which serves as a front end filter to a multistage search method. The pre-filter operates using a pre-computed index of all polygraphs of some single fixed length. This pre-filter does not actually search records. In this manner a user query is resolved into a list of unique N-graphs. The pre-filter then determines a list of records sharing one or more N-graphs, and by tracking the number of N-graphs in each record, it can determine promising records in preferential order. The multistage search method then goes through a greatly reduced list of records to search to yield the search result.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,615,226 to Hartman et al., describes a method and system for a customer to order products on a web site with minimal effort (single-action ordering). The system retains user information and system identifier information to speed future transactions from the same user.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,606,619 to Ortega et al., describes a means for tracking a users “preferences” as the user searches through a hierarchical browse tree. As a user navigates through the “tree” the system and method brings items to the attention of the user based on the popularity of similar user searches. The system has a memory for the identification and recall of each user preferences on subsequent visits to the search engine. Popular nodes are elevated to the attention of the user as they navigate through the tree.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,571,243 to Gupta et al., describes a system and method for extracting information from a semi-structured information source. The system includes a listing stack for holding extracted information. A means for matching at least one extractor to the semi-structured information to return a list of potential matches is also included. The system includes a means for iterating through the list of potential matches and a means for retrieving information from a particular match in the list of potential matches. A means for adding a particular match to the listing stack can also be part of the system.
Although the search engines and database search methods of the prior art are powerful, they focus on the location of information that is already incorporated into the database and do not provide a probabilistic means for determining what type of information could be included in a database base purely on extrapolation of data contents. A prior effort to develop an electronic brokerage system was described by Anna-Lena Neches (“FAST—A Research Project in Electronic Commerce” EM—Electronic Markets No. 9-10, October 1993. pp 25-27). The paper described the initial efforts to develop an EDI-based prototype parts broker and the operation of an actual procurement system. However the publication fails to teach how the parts brokerage service would be able to provide intelligent searching ability to assist consumers in the finding of products.
Subsequent research and development in the electronic brokerage area has been performed by USC and an affiliate lab (ISI). Those efforts have yielded an electronic brokerage system having rudimentary logic used for correlating search terms with information stored in a dynamic data base. Unfortunately this same system also requires a great deal of human operation in the form of handling a wide range of interrupts that cause the electronic brokerage system to pause or halt operation waiting for a human decision. The system also suffers from the requirement that users must set up and activate an account with the server company, as well as deal with varying levels of third party (the server company) intervention from placing the order, to handling the interrupts. Often the handling of the interrupts requires the server company to communicate directly with the consumer, adding another level of human cost, and delay.
Thus there is a need in the field of electronic commerce for a database search means that can provide automated brokerage services to a client or vendor, such that an electronic system or method can determine a potential vendor for a part, service or custom manufacture even where there is no previously existing part, service or custom manufacture from which a database can directly identify.
There is further a need in the field of electronic commerce for consumers of such an automated brokerage system to be able to access and interact with such a system directly.
There is still further a need in the computer arts for a system and method for examining the contents of a database and making an automated evaluation based on some level of logic of what missing data would logically fit in the database or data structure.
These and other objectives are met in part with the presently described Dynamic Catalog System and methods.